West Kelowna Glenrosa & Rose Valley Fire, Day 3…

We’re heading into the 3rd afternoon….

I may have to eat my words. There was a calm over West Kelowna earlier this morning, as I said, things ticking over as normal, well, as normal as can be expected. People were heading off to work, if they’d been evacuated, in the clothes they were evacuated in and things looked promising. As the radio lady just said, “one thing that’s great about the people here is there relative calmness right now.” I agree. It felt like that this morning!

As the morning has gone on though, what started out as a fairly clear morning, blue sky and so on, has become a hazy smoky afternoon. From my viewpoint, I can’t see much, other than smoke right now, but I just got this from one reader, who lives, almost between the 2 fires…

The Glenrosa fire seems to be stronger on this side in the last 1/2 hour, it was predominately on the other side of the mountain last night and this morning. It is at the top and not close to any homes that I can see. I can see glowing orange and at times black smoke. They are working hard and fast with the helicopters and buckets, sometimes flying over our house.

I think they may have a direct view between the 2 hills, straight along the highway almost, so can see a lot more than me from their angle.

The helicopters are aggressively water bombing the Rose Valley fire right now, and evacuation orders have been extended for another 72 hours, I think for areas around there. It’s holding at 150 hectares they say, although due to the steeps sides of the valley, it’s still too dangerous to attack the fire fromthe ground

Also, on the radio, I just heard that the fire is moving up over towards Peachland, with no containment of the fire on it’s southern flank, about 400 hectares. Nothing to worry about just yet though. I’ll keep listening….